I’ve just finished reading an interview with Charles Hawkins, a concierge at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Yes, the one from Pretty Woman.

The interviewer asked him, "Do you ever lose your calm?" He said:

It takes a lot to ruffle my feathers. As long as I know there is chocolate somewhere in the hotel - and there alway is - I can get through anything.

The comforting presence of chocolate.

A few years back, I got pretty upset with a boss of mine when she told me that not everyone holds themselves to the same high standards that I do, and that I had to cut other people some slack. I’ve never felt like I held myself to some hoity-toity high falutin’ standards, and I didn’t understand why it was so unreasonable to expect the same from others that I expect from me.

I could see a problem if I demanded more but not the same.

Doesn’t the universe come along with this:

The only person who should ever have to live by your standards, Natalie, is you.

Let everyone else off the hook. Besides, it’s doubtful they’ve lived as much, dreamt as big, or will ever be able to saunter quite like you.

Tallyho,
The Universe

So as much as I hate to say it, I guess that old boss of mine was right. She just didn’t have the panache that The Universe has.

Just dusting off my hands and setting down all sweaty to a nice cold glass of lemonade after spending a couple of hours kicking the hackers out of this blog. Hmph. Take that.

They’re gone. It’s safe to come back out now. And I installed this pretty new pink glitter security fence to keep them out.

Related to number one in my list of 100 things, CNN has published an article about Hello Kitty being officially named the Tourism Ambassador for Japan.

You go girl!

I also learned from that article that Hello Kitty and I were born in the same year. I bet she’s an Aries too.

Off to book tickets to Japan…

Inspired by: Tricia

1. I adore Hello Kitty to a point that should be embarrassing for a grown woman.
2. I used to hate pink, but now it’s my favorite color.
3. My pet is a fish named Crazy, but I really want a kitty. My roommate is allergic.
4. Growing up, I told everyone I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, but I really wanted to drive around a pickup truck full of cleaning supplies and clean and polish road signs.
5. I have a secret hope that one of these summers, I will get so many freckles, they’ll all touch and I’ll finally have a tan.
6. I just started the Couch-to-5K program and in 9 weeks I’ll have worked up to running three miles. In a row. Without stopping.
7. I’m obsessive about lists and keep a collection of them. Things to do today, things to do this week, things to do this month, things to do this year, things to do before I die, things I need to buy, things I need to remember…
8. I can never buy things with my name on them. They never have “Natalie”.
9. I love vintage poster art. I once went to a vintage poster fair and saw the real things - it was so cool. I wanted to buy one, but the cheapest one was $200.
10. My favorite fruit is any kind of berry.
11. I adore Marilyn Monroe and Audry Hepburn.
12. I think that I’m afraid of my own power.
13. I taught my best friend Diane to knit, and now she’s better at it than me. I knitted toys for her new baby anyway.
14. I don’t understand people who don’t like knitting or reading.
15. I love having long-term projects that take months or years to complete. I think that sometimes I drag a project out just to make it last long enough to make me happy.
16. I’m totally and completed addicted to lip balm. There is at least one tube or compact of lip balm within arm’s reach of my body at all times.
17. I can’t stop collecting small notebooks.
18. I can’t stop collecting blank journals.
19. I re-read old books the way some people catch up with old friends.
20. I wrote a novel that is sorely in need of some revisions and rewriting.
21. I get up each morning four hours before I have to be at work even though my commute is only 20 minutes so I have plenty of time to have a slow start to my day.
22. I’ve broken into three separate hot tubs to go skinny dipping.
23. I love my job. I love making web sites. I like being the only girl at most places I work.
24. Sometimes I think I’d like to move to Italy. I’ve never been there.
25. I was married for seven years, separated for six years, and now divorced for two years.
26. One of my favorite things to do on the weekend is walk along the boardwalk at the beach.
27. I love to bake, but only bake for other people.
28. I took my sewing machine to be fixed a year ago and haven’t used it since. It was broken for four years.
29. I think I could be happy being single for the rest of my life and just traveling and working. I also think I could be happy being married and having kids. I don’t know how to decide.
30. When I start to worry about the future, I try to just have faith that everything that happens is exactly what’s supposed to happen. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
31. Sometimes I have dreams that come true later.
32. I could live the rest of my life on nothing but cheese, chocolate, and bread.
33. I love wearing high heels and being ultra girly.
34. I want to take ballroom dance, belly dance, and swimming lessons.
35. I took classes to become a professional mediator, but stopped short of getting certified.
36. I saw my grandfather in my kitchen a year after he died.
37. I’ve learned the hard way that you shouldn’t play ‘light as a feather stiff as a board’ with a waiter wearing nothing but tighty-whities in a hot tub.
38. I can’t stop eating peanut butter frozen yogurt from the Big Chill. I go at least once a week.
39. I love pinup girls. I want to be a pinup girl.
40. I kissed the Blarney Stone even though it looked gross.
41. I read so many books as a kid, the school librarian gave me special permission to take out up to 10 books from the library each week. The other kids got two.
42. On my first day of kindergarten, I wore a t-shirt that said “Girl’s Lib”. Yes, it was the 70s.
43. On my second day of kindergarten I wore my Mork and Mindy suspenders.
44. I was in the marching band in high school. I loved it. Nothing particularly interesting ever happened at band camp.
45. I spent weeks searching for a pink laptop bag for my laptop. Then I sewed a Hello Kitty patch on it.
46. Sometimes I really love going out for a nice dinner by myself with a good book.
47. I think that whoever asked for the date should pay.
48. I want to get some formal training in graphic design.
49. I think my housekeeper might be stealing little stuff from my apartment. Like my stapler.
50. In ninth grade, I sunk every minute of my extra time into saving a friend’s life who kept threatening to commit suicide. After that, she would only talk to me to be mean. Really mean.
51. Hemingway’s shortest story (For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.) makes me really sad.
52. I don’t use Twitter much, but I could stare at Twistori all day.
53. I never had rice until I was 16.
54. I was once offered a job as flight attendant on the condition that I removed my ankle tattoo. I refused.
55. I’m almost always doing something. I almost never just sit and relax.
56. I think that there is no better breakfast than a crepe with nutella. And sometimes strawberries and bananas too.
57. I own shelves full of books and with very few exceptions, I’ve read them all cover to cover.
58. I was disappointed with college because I thought it was going to be full of people passionate about learning and reading. It wasn’t.
59. I really love playing board games, even though most people think they’re nerdy.
60. In fact, I’m undefeated at Trivial Pursuit.
61. I’ve never been in a limo.
62. I can’t wait until I get my braces off. I intend to go to the ridiculous candy store up the street and buy tons of starbursts, gummy bears, chocolate reisins, and swedish fish and feast on them until I’m sick the day they come off. Then I’ll chew gum for hours.
63. I try really hard not to care what other people think of me.
64. I refuse to believe that gay marriage is evil.
65. I never want to live anywhere that it snows ever again.
66. I’m so scared of bees and avoid them at all costs. I was 17 before I was stung. I’ve only been stung one time since then.
67. I’m reasonably sure that in a past life I was a blond bombshell actress.
68. Being serious for a really long time makes me silly.
69. I also get silly when I’m tired.
70. I got highlights to cover my gray hair.
71. I’m sad that all my friends seem to be moving away from Los Angeles. I love it here.
72. Considering the good eye I have for design, it’s shocking how bad I am at framing and taking photographs. Never hand me your camera.
73. I’m in the midst of my own long-term extreme makeover. Grew out my hair, got braces, and have lost 50 pounds so far.
74. I work really hard not to let jealousy get the best of me.
75. I cannot roll up my tongue.
76. If I was a boy, my mother was going to name me Gregory Nathaniel. If my dad had known he was going to have three girls, I would have been Faith and my sisters would have been Hope and Charity.
77. I have a hard time buying shoes, bracelets, anklets, and bras on account of my larger-than-average body parts.
78. When I hear a new song I love, I play it over and over until I know all the words.
79. I snore.
80. I made it to the State Championships of the Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee when I was in sixth grade. I got out in the third round for misspelling ‘independence’.
81. My favorite lunch is a grilled cheese sandwich and cream of tomato soup.
82. I graduated high school with a 4.0 and college with a 3.9.
83. I love that I’m an INFJ, the rarest personality type in the Myers-Briggs test.
84. I didn’t go to the dentist for 12 years. I go regularly now.
85. I’m really good at grammar and spelling. I think it’s all the reading.
86. My favorite Christmas special is Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas. I know all the songs by heart.
87. I’ve never needed glasses or contacts, but dread the day I will.
88. I hate spending the entire day in meetings.
89. I don’t drink coffee. I never did.
90. My favorite movie snack is popcorn with extra butter and M&Ms mixed into it. If you’re going to eat a bad-for-you movie snack, you might as well go all the way.
91. The house I grew up in had an old-fashioned claw foot tub. I was the only one in the family who loved it. I’d take baths with the water up to my neck.
92. I’m so hyper-sensitive to caffeine that an espresso can leave me jittery and with ringing in my ears.
93. My favorite video games are puzzle games like Tetris.
94. I love going to a baseball game and kicking back with a hot dog and a beer. I don’t really know much about baseball, and don’t care to learn more than I know now.
95. The ocean and the moon are my favorite things. The stars are a close second.
96. One of my most treasured possessions is a ring that belonged to my grandmother.
97. I’m often annoyingly positive.
98. I am a staunch believer in karma.
99. I hate avocados, olives, pineapple, and mushrooms.
100. I am an Aries.

In 2007, A List Apart conducted a Web Design Survey. They found that overall, women make up just 16.1% of the web design industry. That number was further broken down by job title. While as many as 41.6% of Writers/Editors were women just 7.2% of Developers were women. Overall, there’s a very definite bias toward fewer women being involved in the more technology-heavy types of positions.

The small number of women working in technology becomes a topic of discussion in the blogosphere every few months when conference attendees complain that all or nearly all of the presenters or speakers are male. It only makes sense that the speakers and presenters would be representative of the industry as a whole, so the problem is not that there’s a lack of female presenters and speakers, but a lack of women working in the field. Then everyone wonders why.

Male technology workers get interviewed about a great variety of subjects, but I’ve yet to hear an interview of a female technology worker where she wasn’t asked about why she thought there were no women in the field. I find that really frustrating - not only are her skills being ignored, but she’s being called to answer for her entire gender.

Recently at South by Southwest, I attended a panel titled “Attracting Girls to IT“. It was fascinating. Apparently in elementary school, interest in math, science and technology is about equal between genders, but by 5th grade, girls start to lose interest in these subjects. By high school, they’re barely interested, leaving just a tiny group of us geek girls.

I think that sometimes people like to think that sexual discrimination doesn’t happen all that often. But it does! We like to think that we’re a modern culture, and that things like gender don’t affect the subjects we like in school. But gender obviously plays a role. Parents, teachers, media, and others are all sending a message that math and science and technology are “boys’ subjects”. I know I got that message over and over again, sometimes in very subtle ways and sometimes in blatant, kick-you-in-the-gut-you’re-a-girl-and-you-don’t-belong-here kind of way. I think it takes a special kind of girl to stand up for herself through that and stick with what she really loves doing, no matter what the other students or the teacher think.

That kind of discrimination still happens in workplaces too. Some workplaces more than others, some coworkers more than others. I’ve experienced it. It’s awful, the feeling that your skills and knowledge and talent are somehow less valuable just because you’re a woman. Some days I can just ignore it and put my head down and get my work done, but other days I just feel defeated.

I’ve decided to become a volunteer mentor for girls interested in working in technology through MentorNet. Maybe I can keep one more girl from being turned away from her dream by the thoughtlessness of others. Maybe you can, too!

I think that often shyness is greatly misunderstood. I am painfully shy, afraid to have attention focused on me, afraid to make a mistake.So often, others read this as snobbishness or disinterest. Even when this is so far from the truth.

I always knew and accepted that I was shy. It never occurred to me that it was neither normal nor desirable. I read some sort of etiquette book which said something along the lines of ‘If you are shy, you must do everything you can to overcome this terrible condition.’

Terrible condition? Really?

I’ve always had a distinct sense that the number 7 was green. A shiny, glossy green.

Number 8 is red. Nine is purple. Five is blue.

No rhyme or reason to it. No logical explanation. I think of the number 7, and in my head, I just know that it’s green. I never thought much about it.

Then I came across this article at Salon.com on synesthesia: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/01/15/synesthesia/index1.html

Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which activation of one sensory processing system (e.g., numbers or written language) leads to the automatic engagement of a second, distinct sensory processing system (e.g., color) to create a “crossed” sensory perception.

It was the first time I’d heard of synesthesia or knew that associating colors with numbers was all that unusual. Unlike the author of the Salon article, I never felt like a freak because of the color associations, and I never felt a need to close myself off from the color perceptions. I just accepted them.

Now, reading about this article, I wonder if synesthesia has affected my life in some way. I think that more than likely, my synesthesia is simply an indication of my sensitive nature. I remember in grade school when a bee would fly into our classroom through the open window, fear would clutch at my stomach. I was, and still am, irrationally afraid of bees. With a bee in the classroom, I could concentrate on nothing else. I would sit almost frozen in fear and look around at my classmates and the teacher only to realize that I was the only one who noticed the bee. I was nearly always the only one to notice.  I sat warily watching the bee fly in big, lazy circles, and wish that I wasn’t always the only one to notice these things.

Sensitivity makes life more difficult, but it’s also a blessing. Noticing the things no one else notices - taking action to fix them. Making other people’s lives a little bit better in ways they’d never think about themselves.

Today the universe emailed me to tell me about my dreams:

The Evolution of a Dream

Dream is implanted into brain.

Dreamer becomes thrilled.

Dreamer becomes terrified.

If no action is taken, terrifying thoughts grow into flesh-eating monsters. Dream is considered unrealistic.

If action is taken, terrifying thoughts are revealed to be paper tigers. Confidence soars, miracles unfold, and dreamer begins to saunter.

Either way, Natalie, nothing remains the same.

Yow,

The Universe

Wow. I barely know what to say.

I think that often, we give gifts out of obligation or expectation. For a birthday, for Christmas, a housewarming, a wedding. So often, it seems that these are token gifts. The things that you give because you’re expected to give something.

I want to give more heart gifts. Gifts that really mean something. More than tokens. More than obligations. Gifts that express my appreciation, my love, my compassion, my warmth. I think that often heart gifts are gifts of ourselves. Our time, our energy, our attention, our talent. Things we have created with our hands, with our thoughts.

Or, as Ralph Waldo Emerson so eloquently put it in his essay, “Gifts”:

Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing.

At bartleby.com you can read the entire essay.